Service Manager, seen in Figure 8.6a, provides a graphical utility for managing PC-BSD® services. Buttons make it easy to start, stop, or restart services and to set the highlighted service to be enabled or disabled whenever the system boots. To access this utility, go to Control Panel ➜ Service Manager or type pc-su pc-servicemanager. You will be prompted to input the administrative password.

Figure 8.6a: Managing Services Using Service Manager

By default, services will be listed alphabetically. You can reorder the services by clicking on the Service Name, Running, or Enabled header.

Service Manager is a graphical front-end to the rc scripts located in /etc/rc.d. PC-BSD® 9.2 will include an Info button where you can get a short description of the highlighted service.

If you do not know what a service does, do not change its settings in Service Manager. If you would like to learn more about a service, try seeing if there is a man page for it. For example, type man apm or man bootparamd. If a man page does not exist, try seeing what man pages are associated with that keyword. For example: